In her bright title poets dare
What the wild eye of fancy sees—
Similitude—the clear, the fair
Light mystery of images.
Round the blue sea I love the best
The argent foam played, slender, fleet;
I saw—past Wordsworth and the rest—
Her natural, Greek, and silver feet.
TO SILENCE
"SPACE, THE BOUND OF A SOLID": SILENCE, THEN,
THE FORM OF A MELODY
Silence, for thine idleness I raise
My silence-bounded singing in thy praise,
But for thy moulding of my Mozart's tune,
Thy hold upon the bird that sings the moon,
Thy magisterial ways.
Man's lovely definite melody-shapes are thine,
Outlined, controlled, compressed, complete, divine.
Also thy fine intrusions do I trace,
Thy afterthoughts, thy wandering, thy grace,
Within the poet's line.
Thy secret is the song that is to be.
Music had never stature but for thee,
Sculptor! strong as the sculptor Space whose hand
Urged the Discobolus and bade him stand.
* * * * *
Man, on his way to Silence, stops to hear and see.
THE ENGLISH METRES
The rooted liberty of flowers in breeze
Is theirs, by national luck impulsive, terse,
Tethered, uncaptured, rules obeyed "at ease,"
Time-strengthened laws of verse.
Or they are like our seasons that admit
Inflexion, not infraction: Autumn hoar,
Winter more tender than our thoughts of it,
But a year's steadfast four;